We rub the heroic dreams, violence and arrogance, the distance and trek, the money and danger relationships that cannot be touched in real life, all in the movie.
And then there were westerns.
Today, Sister Shan recommends a western film with a cracked and piping hot reputation.
From the Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan —
The Ballad of Buster Struges
The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival the other day and was nominated for the Golden Lion and won the Best Screenplay Award.
"Buster" is a collection of western adult fairy tales, which was originally intended to be made into a TV series, but finally made into a feature film.
The story is evil enough, dark enough, heartless enough, lonely enough, absurd enough, terrifying enough. The most beautiful scenery and the fastest marksmanship of the Western are all here, clean, sharp and somber. A movie has six stories, each of which allows the audience to quickly immerse themselves.
It can be said that it is the most explosive movie in recent times!
The Coen brothers have always been independent filmmakers outside of Hollywood movies, and their stylization is very dazzling.
They handed over to the audience one shocking film after another, "Blood Labyrinth", "Ice Storm", "Old Nobody", "Earth Thunder"... It has won all the Oscars, Cannes and Venice A film festival awards, and has also won a large number of fans.
The impermanence of life and death, the yin and dark moments of human nature, have become light and unworthy soot in their images.
"The Ballad of Buster Struges" is the coen brothers' first digital film, although it is out of film, but the picture texture is still great, that kind of thick adult fairy tale style can make people into the drama at a glance.
The story is very distinctive, there are six short films, like a fable, each story is appalling, making your back cold and the afterglow long.
The first story, The Ballad:
There's the Western's iconic desert, there's gunfights, there's cowboys.
They rode on black horses, wore Stetson-style wide-brimmed high-top felt hats, jeans, leather tops and boots, red printed square scarves around their necks, and pistols around their waists, with grim expressions.
But the cowboy in this story is not the cowboy we are familiar with.
The cowboy old man in "Buster" is not handsome, nor tall, wearing a white hat, wearing a white casual suit, riding a white horse, and most importantly, he is full of smiles, holding a guitar, singing nonsense, self-made and self-righteous songs.
Where is the cowboy, saying that he is Elvis Presley is more convincing.
When you're still immersed in the song of this desert Elvis presley, that's how the bloody case happened.
Lao Ba washed the tavern in blood, broke five fingers with five shots, and headshot the enemy without a single gun.
When you are convinced of Lao Ba's invincibility in the world, his life is quickly ended by people, and the story stops abruptly.
The second story, Near Algodones:
Young Frank wanted to get rich overnight, and then he found the bank that stood between the deserts. Judging by his eyes and attire, he must be quite powerful, even with his shoes with the standard Spurs of the West.
Of course, if the bank can survive in such an environment, it must have two brushes.
Really fighting, Frank wasn't the old clerk's rival.
Frank is captured and about to be executed, but an accident occurs.
After that, he had several accidents in succession.
In the end, he still died in an accident.
The third story, "Meal Ticket":
The mobile theater troupe may be the most real jianghu people among the common people, and a boss, with an actor who can speak the Tao, can form a team, walk around in the rivers and lakes, and support the family.
The boss didn't have any money, but he knew that the people liked to look different.
So, his actor is a deformed child with no limbs. With thick black eyebrows, green clothes, and a white and pink face, he simply came out of the oil painting.
No matter what the weather, the actor always performed hard, and on stage he recited Shelley's sentences like a great man of letters.
But privately, he stared at the rice bowl in the boss's hand with a low brow at all times, and every bite of rice was quite difficult.
Two people who are also at the bottom do not become intimate because of the same circumstances and the bondage of interests.
In the end, the audience became smaller and smaller, and the boss took his place with an arithmetic rooster.
The fourth story, "Gold Rush":
The story of the gold rush has always been the mainstream of Westerns, and there have really been two gold rushes in American history.
The story of getting rich overnight has always been the most fascinating.
Therefore, in the story of the gold panning in this film, the Coen brothers used the thickest brush.
The magnificence of the mountains, the turquoise of the meadows, the desolation of the snow-capped mountains, and the clarity of the streams are completely a paradise.
Gold diggers walked into this peach blossom garden and began their own gold panning road.
He dug one pit after another, looking for Mr. Gold every day. The earth was thus marked by him.
No one knows if he will find gold.
No one knows how far the golden land is.
When he finally found Mr. Kaneko, his life was hanging in the balance.
The gold digger did not die in the end, he left with a heavy gold, leaving behind a series of pits and forest animals that had long been accustomed to having him here.
The director can let the gold digger leave alive, thinking that he left a little kindness to the birds when he was digging the bird's nest.
The fifth story, The Panicked Girl:
This story is also Sister Shan's favorite story, because its drama and profundity have a lot of extensibility, and it is the kind that can make long films at any time.
Miss Langebo has no relatives and has been renting Mrs. Han's home.
The young lady had only one brother, and one day the brother finally came to pick her up and leave.
At dinner, the brother and the young lady also announced the good news that the brother would introduce Miss Lange to his partner, who was going to get married.
Miss Lange embarked on a journey with her brother and his brigade of carriages and horses carrying goods.
However, halfway through, my brother suddenly fell ill and died.
Her brother is dead, and her marriage contract with her brother's partner is hopeless, and Miss Lange is sad and faces the huge problem of not having money to pay the maid's fees.
Her life fell to the bottom.
At this moment, the heroic and upright Mr. Knapp entered the life of the young lady.
At this time, Nap, who had long planned to marry and have children, proposed to Lange, and he thought that Miss Lange would not agree, but Miss Lange had already appreciated Nap, and she agreed to Nap's marriage proposal.
Miss Langer's future was no longer slim, and she was no longer annoyed with the puppy that liked to bark wildly, and her face was full of smiles.
When everything was about to be completed, suddenly barbarians appeared in the desert.
The old man Arthur gave the gun to Miss Lange and told her that if he was killed, the gun would be used to protect her innocence and commit suicide.
The savage crowd attacked, and poor Miss Lange had seen such a scene.
Fortunately, Arthur was brave and resourceful, and when the barbarians were ready to slaughter him with a knife, he quickly fired.
The barbarian had repulsed, but it was too late, and Miss Langer had already committed suicide when the barbarian raised his knife, and poor Miss Langer, who was like that frightened puppy.
Arthur looked at Knapp, who had come from afar, not knowing how to open his mouth to him.
The sixth story, Death:
A group of strange people sitting in the carriage, talking to each other.
The hunter rarely goes to the city, but every time he goes to the city, he has to say non-stop, in the name of which people need to socialize.
The scholar's wife has great respect for her husband, and she constantly praises her husband's academic achievements and his love for himself.
They firmly believed in the correctness of their way of life, and they quarreled over it.
Opposite them is a pair of bounty hunters who are responsible for helping Death transport corpses.
On the roof of the car, there were real corpses.
The three of them shuddered, knowing that the time of death was near.
The carriage traveled from sunset to midnight.
The coachman waved a long whip in the middle of the night, and he never stopped, that was the rule.
Each story begins with a page turn and ends in the form of a page turn, especially like the feeling of watching fairy tales when we were children.
Although the stories are different, we are always fascinated by each story, immersed in this story, and can't help but rush down the page in search of the next more exciting story.
Absolutely no guess what will happen in the next second.
Each story revolves around the theme of "death," and the last one is like a summary of death:
No matter what kind of person you are when you are alive, you will be in the same carriage after you die and go to the same place.
Time will not stop for you, even if you stay in the world, you can't escape the fate of going to the palace of the god of death.
The Coen brothers have always loved to discuss death, and in their stories, death comes suddenly, absurdly, even lightly, violently without warning, at the end and at the beginning, and everyone is an insignificant moment on the vast earth.
Because, your story, my story, will turn into a whisper of style, flying dust, falling raindrops, nourishing time and space and the earth.
The evil black story has blossomed the most wonderful flowers here in the Coen brothers.
Such an independent filmmaker with an attitude and a dream is a good talent that cannot be sought in the current film industry, and "Ballad" is a very wonderful and very Cohen work.
Sister Shan didn't say more, just go and see!
(Movie Rotten Tomatoes Editorial Department: Sister Shan)